Archive for Rockies

Back from vacation, I returned to the field Monday for an Instructional League game between the Athletics and Rockies. How is the Instructional League different from the Bridge League, which I’ve covered previously? Both are unofficial leagues with a scrimmage-style setting, but “Instructs” take place after the rest of the minor league schedule has concluded, and typically includes a handful of select players from the various affiliates that the parent club wants to see more of, and maybe the best couple of guys from each org’s DSL squad. So, Bridge League (which takes place after the Draft and Complex League seasons are over but before the rest of the minors are done) features rookie-level players, new draftees, and rehabbers, while Instructional League has more select talent from several different minor league levels, and often includes Arizona Fall Leaguers who are getting ramped up for their looming slate. There isn’t the same kind of internal team video or shared data for this window as there is for regular season affiliated ball, so this makes Instructs particularly useful to see in person. Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this week, the Los Angeles Angels unexpectedly announced that longtime owner Arte Moreno had agreed to sell the organization to Stan Kroenke, the icositetra-billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Rams of the NFL, the Denver Nuggets of the NBA, the Colorado Avalanche of the NHL, the Colorado Rapids of MLS, the Colorado Mammoth of the National Lacrosse League, and Arsenal Football Club, both the men’s team of the English Premier League and the women’s team of the Super League. The deal is reportedly for $4 billion, a record price for the sale of a controlling stake in an MLB franchise, surpassing the $3.9 billion sale of the San Diego Padres to Kwanza Jones and José E. Feliciano earlier this summer.

Forbes estimates Kroenke’s net worth to be $24.3 billion, making him the new wealthiest MLB owner, ahead of Steve Cohen, who’s worth about $23 billion. Ben Clemens wrote about the sale on Wednesday, and I’d encourage you to check it out for everything that you need to know about the Angels under Moreno and the ever-increasing values of MLB franchises. That second part is what I want to stress, especially as it pertains to the seemingly inevitable lockout coming this offseason. Rob Manfred and the 30 team owners are going to push for a salary cap, and to support their case, many of them will both cite the need for competitive balance and claim that baseball is a bad business. When they do, think back on the two record-setting sales from this year and understand the real reason why management has shut down the sport. But let’s not get too caught up in the doom and gloom right now, because the upshot of the sale is the Angels’ future looks a whole lot more promising under Kroenke than it did under Moreno.

That’s the last we’ll talk about the business of baseball today. Instead, in this week’s mailbag, we’ll answer your questions about teams that finished the season below .500 with a positive run differential, the single-game feat most correlated with career success, the pitchers who had the longest careers while pitching their first and last games on the same field, and the ideal hot dog per game ratio. But first, I’d like to remind you that this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com. Read the rest of this entry »

With apologies to Tarik Skubal and the Dodgers, for my money the most eye-catching deal ahead of Monday’s trade deadline was the Red Sox acquiring Adley Rutschman in a six-player blockbuster with the Orioles. Not only did a switch-hitting All-Star catcher move from one Wild Card contender to another, but he did so within the same division — and he’s more than a rental, with one more year of arbitration eligibility before he reaches free agency. Though he’s currently on the injured list due to inflammation in his left wrist, Rutschman is reportedly nearing a rehab assignment, and once he returns, he should provide a substantial upgrade for a team whose catchers landed on my Replacement-Level Killers list a few weeks ago.

Rustchman wasn’t the only prominent catcher on the move to a contender on Monday, as the Marlins traded Liam Hicks to the Rays, but he’s a part-time backstop whose hitting makes him a useful DH and first base option as well. While the concurrence of his being dealt illustrates that trading for a catcher on the fly in the midst of a playoff race isn’t unheard of, such moves do stand out. They’re not to be undertaken lightly because of the weighty responsibility that falls on a catcher’s shoulders in terms of quickly having to build relationships with a new pitching staff to understand repertoires, situational preferences, and interpersonal dynamics. Odds are that those newcomers are also expected to provide more offense than the catchers they replaced, because offensive slumps often spur teams to make such changes. Read the rest of this entry »

In this trade deadline season where everyone’s within reach of a playoff spot, the Marlins were one of several teams that attempted to chart a middle path. Sure, we’ll sell off some of our best players — including, in Liam Hicks and Lake Bachar, some guys with plenty of team control left — but we’ll add in other trades and try to backfill those roles.

Miami’s big major league add was 26-year-old reliever Victor Vodnik, late of the Colorado Rockies. That sounds like damning with faint praise, and it is: Vodnik has a 5.25 ERA in 36 innings this season, and at the time of the trade, he was fifth among Rockies relievers in gmLI, which is the average leverage index when he enters the game. In other words, the Rockies don’t think Vodnik is a high-leverage reliever, or at least they hadn’t been using him that way.

Vodnik cost the Marlins third baseman Connor Norby, who was the less successful half of the Trevor Rogers trade, and pitching prospect Aiden May. Read the rest of this entry »

The Brewers pulled up short in their pursuit of Tarik Skubal, but ahead of Monday’s trade deadline, they did augment both their rotation and their bullpen. In a deal with the fading Cardinals, Milwaukee acquired 28-year-old righty starter Dustin May and 29-year-old lefty reliever JoJo Romero in exchange for a pair of outfield prospects, Alexander Frias and Josiah Ragsdale. Separately, the Brewers also traded for 31-year-old righty reliever Antonio Senzatela from the Rockies in deal for two more prospects, left-hander Mark Manfredi and shortstop Juan Martinez.

At 69-42, the Brewers entered Monday with the majors’ best record, half a game better than the Dodgers (69-43). Led by Jacob Misiorowski — whose 1.63 ERA, 2.05 FIP, 40.6% strikeout rate, and 5.0 WAR all lead the majors — their rotation has the NL’s lowest ERA (3.48) and the majors’ lowest FIP (3.54), highest strikeout rate (26.4%), and highest WAR (17.8). Misiorowski and fellow starters Brandon Sproat, Logan Henderson, Shane Drohan, and Robert Gasser are all 27 or younger, and all but Misiorowski and Sproat have thrown fewer than 100 major league innings in their careers. They’re all likely to face workload concerns at some point, so adding another starter at the deadline was a necessity even if he wasn’t someone who might give the team’s odds of winning the World Series a CC Sabathia-sized lift, as Skubal would have. Read the rest of this entry »

The Chicago White Sox are in a position to buy at the deadline for the first time in Chris Getz’s three seasons as GM. And Getz sure is getting his money’s worth. First Luis Castillo, then Huascar Brazobán, and now an outfielder: Brenton Doyle, late of the Colorado Rockies.

Doyle, 28, is not so much a unique player as the most extreme sustainable version of the all-glove/no-bat center field archetype. He’s making $3.1 million this year as a first-year arbitration guy, and he’s under team control through 2029. Getz parted with quite a bit to get him: right-handed pitcher Mason Adams and shortstop prospect Carlos Vielma.

Doyle was a fourth-round pick out of Division II Shepherd University; he’s that school’s only big leaguer in the past 50 years, but the name fits because he plays center field like a border collie. From Doyle’s debut in 2023 to the end of last season, he led all outfielders in FRV with 44. Pete Crow-Armstrong, Jacob Young, and Ceddanne Rafaela have been better on a per-inning basis, but that’s the kind of rarefied air Doyle has been playing in. Read the rest of this entry »

Hello. While on paternity leave, I kept a journal about baseball and my daughter, who is not named Derek Jr., but who will henceforth be referred to as Derek Jr. You can read all of the entries here.

May 20
Derek Jr. and I will be on our own for much of the day. My wife is planning on meeting up with a friend for a walk in the park, taking an hour-long call, and then spending a couple hours editing her novel. Things go beautifully at first. Derek Jr. naps for nearly three hours in the morning, during which time I do a little writing myself. I feed and change her when she wakes up, but the effort of having someone else feed and clothe her seems like it’s already tuckered her out. Such is the life of a baby.

I put her right back down to sleep and try to nap in the room with her, but I can’t sleep. My brain is still whirring from the writing I did earlier. So I grab the monitor and take a crack at mixing a children’s song I’ve been working on. It’s the last thing I recorded before Derek Jr. was born. Fittingly, it’s called “I’m Sleepy.” Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been thinking a lot about the baseball calendar in recent days, specifically how we use it to both mark the passage of time and look ahead to the possibility of what’s yet to come. As fans, we slice up the season to make it easier for us to discuss noteworthy performances, evaluate trends, and justify our irrational faith that our team just might turn things around. As analysts, we know that we shouldn’t draw grand conclusions from these individual slivers — the sample sizes are just too small — but we also recognize the benefits of using these otherwise arbitrary segments to understand the season as it unfolds.

I mention all of this because this weekend is start of the second half of the season. Of course, we all know that the All-Star break hasn’t been the season’s true midpoint for some time now, as Opening Day is scheduled earlier in the year than it used to be while the All-Star Game continues to be played on the second Tuesday of July. Even so, there are three reasons that I continue to find value in splitting up the season in mid-July. First, pausing the regular season for a few days provides a natural demarcation point. Second, with playoff field now expanded to 12 teams, the postseason lasts longer than ever before. Because the team that wins the World Series could play up to 22 additional games, the All-Star break ends up being much closer to the halfway point on the journey from Opening Day to the decisive game of the Fall Classic. Finally, the three-week stretch after the All-Star Game is a frenetic rush to the trade deadline that then rolls right into the Dog Days of August and the strenuous sprint of September. The games after the All-Star break are much more demanding than the ones before it, thus making the few days of respite in July feel like a more representative dividing line than Game 81 in late June.

Anyway, in this first mailbag of the second half, we’re answering your questions on what it would be like if MLB had a loan mechanism like professional soccer, Kyle Karros’ breakout, the longest time a team has spent within a half-game of .500, and what Anthony Rendon’s career might have been. But first, I’d like to remind you that this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s a busy time for sports right now. The NBA Finals have been incredible. The Stanley Cup Finals have been nearly as good. The World Cup just started; Team USA is playing tonight. With this embarrassment of entertainment riches, regular season baseball might seem to temporarily lose a little bit of its luster. But even if you want to watch those other great spectacles, I implore you to set aside a few hours of your life this weekend for baseball. For a limited time only, they’re playing on the moon.

OK, fine, maybe not the actual moon. There are any number of logistical and physical challenges involved in that. But the first half of the six-game Las Vegas series has been the next best thing, and before the A’s play the Rockies this weekend, I’m hoping to convince you to watch it. I wouldn’t want my baseball to always look like this, but in small doses, it’s absolutely captivating.

The Athletics, currently playing in the minor league stadium of the Sacramento River Cats, have taken up an even briefer temporary residence in the stadium of their Triple-A affiliate, the Las Vegas Aviators. It’s a preview of sorts – in advance of their scheduled 2028 move to Sin City, the team is playing a six-game series there. And boy, does the ball carry in the desert.

Las Vegas sits only 2,000 feet above sea level. That sounds like nothing – Coors Field, the archetypical high-altitude ballpark, is famously a mile high. But the major league stadium at the second-highest altitude is Chase Field in Arizona, and it’s only 1,000 feet above sea level. That elevation helps the ball carry, but it’s only one of the many reasons that offense is high here. For one thing, it’s hot. High temperatures are forecast to exceed 100 degrees this weekend, with lows in the mid-80s providing little respite even at night. The air is as dry as it gets; Las Vegas has a lower average relative humidity than any big league city, and it’s particularly dry in the middle of summer. It’s an outdoor park, so there’s no escaping the hot, arid conditions. The PCL was the homer-happiest minor league in 2025, and Vegas was the homer-happiest park in the PCL. Read the rest of this entry »

When I announced my intention to write about Antonio Senzatela, Jon Becker burst into my Slack DMs like the Kool-Aid Man to demand I use a Penn and Teller-based headline. Credit where due: It was a great idea.

You know what’s not traditionally a good idea? Writing about Antonio Senzatela.

The rigorous study of baseball empirics has made us all smarter and better, but there are a few things I miss about the old days. Foremost among them is Nichols’ Law of Catcher Defense, an old pre-sabermetrics axiom which states the following: A catcher’s defensive reputation is inversely proportional to his offensive abilities. Read the rest of this entry »